1. Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
Page 158 Author Biography
Page 160 Story

2. The Single Effect
Poe was the first writer to classify and define the short story as a distinct literary genre and argue that the short story deserved the same status as such other genres as the poem and the novel.
He asserted that a story should be constructed to achieve “a certain unique or single effect.”

3. The Single effect
Poe believed that every character, detail, and incident in a story should contribute to this effect, commenting that, “in the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.”
He also said that if a writer’s, “very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step.”

4. The Fall…
(Reading of the story)
Someone must read the last several paragraphs
(Movie trailer)